Sunday, October 31, 2010

Yes...it made for some awesome birthday parties while growing up. I turned 40 on the 30th....1/2 hour before midnight. I was born in the Pumpkin Patch. Happy birthday to me! I'm a little hung over this morning/afternoon....oh and Happy Halloween!

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

I know...it's not 10-10-10 when I posted this but hey....it. looks. cool. period. (redundancy is awesome). I haven't been bank rolled for much else but 3-10 dollar tourneys etc. lately...my run in late spring-late summer ended abruptly. Most likely due to crappy play but also the new schedules for everybody in my family. My wife started working again as a teacher in Boston. That means our earning are back to where we were in '07 when I moved down to my new house. That is all well and good...but....that also means our 2+ year old has to go back into daycare. It also means I have to drop off both kids to daycare and Kindergarten in the AM. We are scheduled to the minute every morning to say the least. To get our new schedule started my daughter got sick as soon as she went into daycare. That f'd everything up and I got the brunt of the sickness last week as well. I'll tell you what. It doesn't matter if you have one stay home or both work...you are going to be broke no matter what. Mortgage, daycare, kindergarten, bills, bills, and more bills. ugh. That is why I grind the small buy in tourneys for 5-6 years straight. So...now that I have the obligatory FML section of the post over with.....A little update on the current Poker life is needed NO?
I haven't been able to play any 'live' poker so most of the playing has been online. I am mostly used to that for the last 5 years but....I needs me some live poker once in a while. The last time I played a live tourney was at the Seabrook poker room on a dreary rain soaked nor'easter night during my summer vacation. Needless to say that the play reflected that of a charity tournament. In a word...BAD! The last time I was there a guy called my all in bet with a Q and a 9. The board had an Ace, a Queen, and a 5 or something. I had A-J or Diamonds and raised to start the hand. So he drew out to two pair.....I think the last words I heard him say were "It's about time that happened to me". My last words before I walked out were "Jesus Christ". Most people had a dumbfounded look on their faces. That was my intro. to Seabrook.
So this weekend I was sick of playing online and was just hoping my wife would do something like say get a reservation to Foxwoods or something? I took Monday off as a vacation day as we don't have Columbus day off in the private sector. My parents graciously asked if we wanted them to babysit for our kids overnight on Sunday. "um....yeah....yes....yesssss we do" I had a glint in my eye and my wife heard the conversation. So as the kids were playing in the other room she gets laptop PC out and starts surfing the internets. I had a peripheral view of the screen and I saw Foxwoods. Was she doing this for my upcoming 40th birthday? Was she just checking her dream card points balance?? Yes and Yes were the answers. We got a cheap room at the 'Two Trees Inn' that is on the grounds of Foxwoods but a little detached and you need to take a shuttle to get there. The shuttle runs every 5 minutes. Notice how I skipped the travel down there and everything else? It only took a few minutes to get ready and GONE! It's been about a year since we've been there and this was mostly for a relaxing time away for 24 hours. So the 'Two Trees Inn' is closest to the casino located over the Poker room at Foxwoods. Get where I'm going here? So I dabbled around the slots with wifey for a while...she looks at me and says...."OK....I can see that you're dying to get down to the Poker room so why don't you go and we'll meet back at the Inn later"? "Um.....yeah....OK".....beeline to poker room. It's a good thing the wifey doesn't play poker.....she reads me like a book.
I think this was the shortest poker session I've played down there ever. I was there for about 2.5 hours. Only because I was tired...not because of a bad session. We got there around 8 PM and I didn't get down to the poker room until about 11:30 PM. I bought in short since...well I didn't have a huge amount of money. I bought in for 180.00. It's a 1-2 NL table and there was plenty of action right away. I figure If I bust out I'll get some sleep/rest/relaxation so it's all good. The table wasn't full the whole time I was there but I'll do my best to get the lay of the land on the table.
To my left was quirky Internet kid. He had a baseball hat and goofy air force sunglasses. I had a side view of his eyes so I actually picked up some tells from him. His M.O. was incessant talking about pot odds, fold equity, his favorite hand, why someone played a hand this way..that way...blah blah f'n blah. Most people wanted to stab their eyeballs with a pencil but it didn't bother me. I thought it was kind of funny. Next to him was a large dude with a Celtics hat on. He played a lot of pots and was perpetually short stacked. He yo-yo'd for a few hours being the loose Aggressive type....or at least until I knocked him out. The guy next to him had a huge stack of chips...he had a Celtics (Celts hat #2) hat on and seemed to be a real solid player. Guy next to him was a loose-Agg. dude who yo-yo'd quite a bit. One of the few without a baseball hat. Guy next to him was a sort of angry dude who wanted to stab quirky internet kid in the eye with an icepick. He was kind of tight but couldn't let go of A-Ko for the life of him. He had a Red Sox hat. The guy sitting to his left was an older dude with a southern drawl. He was solid. He reminded me of a character movie guy. Not sure who he is but he looked a lot like him and of course sounded like him. Kid next to him was another Red Sox (Red Sox hat #2) hat and made Quad Jacks and promptly got a stack after quirky Internet kid and Indonesian guy sitting directly on my right bet into them on the flop. He promptly lost his stack two hands later to friendly (he liked to talk about his hands etc. giving a lot of info. away therefore friendly) Indonesian guy on my right. Kid next to him was another dude with a Red Sox hat (Red Sox hat #3). This kid was hilarious. He was drunk and wouldn't stop talking about hands after they were played. Funny stuff. He shoved his open ended straight into the Celtics hat #2 guy and the guy thought it over for like 5 minutes then folded. The drunk kid showed his open ended straight and the the Celtics hat #2 guy said he folded the same hand. Lastly next to the drunk kid (Red Sox hat #3) was the Indonesian guy to my right. I threw away A-Ko and A-Qs a few times after raising Pre-flop and then making continuation bets to a few players. Most had some believable bluffs....but I wasn't going to lose my stack with nothing on the board. That makes me tight at Foxwoods. It's been a while since I've been there of course...but yes that is tight. I wasn't really trying to build a tight image but after an hour or so that was what was thought by most of the other players. They told me. I used that later.
I had a hand where I raised pre-flop with A-Qh and a 3 heart flop fell. This was of course before the 'Tight' image was somehow stuck on my forehead. 4 callers. I raised to 8 pre-flop most of the time. Sometimes to 12. I got callers until I started showing great hands at showdowns later in the evening. So anyway five callers on my flopped nut flush. I checked. There was a raise and re-raise and my all in. Nobody called the all in...but that was a typical hand for the next two hours. Quirky Internet kid was providing plenty of entertainment and unnecessary poker strategy for hours. He and Drunk kid were hilarious and kept the table somewhat loose....both in mood and play. I had quite a few playable hands....more so than usual. Most of the time that I've spent there in the past has been folding crap for what seems like hours on end. There were some heated words between Red Sox hat dude #2 and quirky Internet kid but somehow he diffused the situation with some well timed humour. He also got stacked by the Quads of Red Sox hat dude #3 earlier so he got lots of action. I did actually see his pupils get bigger when he saw a flop on one of his pre-flop raised hands. I didn't think I would ever get to use that tell but I had a side-view sitting directly to his right. The other guy obviously had no clue because of the goofy Air force type sun glasses he had on. He did make an interesting move on a hand between the two of us.....a straddle-bet hand. Being the quirky Internet dude that frequents Foxwoods he put the straddle bet out and everyone folded. I called. I had Ac-2s. The flop was Qc-8c-2c. I bet 20 having the nut flush draw and he raised to 40. I called of course and a non club 5 fell. OK...I got spooked and checked the non club 5....he went all in. FAWK! what the hell did he have on a stupid straddle bet? I went into the tank and started a conversation with him. He was confident and didn't look like he was bluffing. Everything in my gut told me to fold. "I'll show you my hand if you can guess what it is" he said. I thought it over folded and guessed pocket 8's. Sure enough he flopped silly...but he also knew I was on a flush draw. After reading all those poker books I think I'm finally picking up the right physical tells etc. Another 2 or a club and would have been one of those hands that everybody screams about and everybody else in the room turns their head to see what's up. At that point I was up to about 250 even after that hand so the night was still young. There was also a couple of people that busted after an hour. I think it was the older dude with the southern drawl and the kid who flopped quad J's earlier. He reloaded short after losing most of his stack to the Indonesian dude to my right....I think he had J's again and the Indo. dude had Q's. After another half hour I started getting some interesting hands and coordinated flops to go along with them. I had a pair of J's in under the gun and raised to 12. There were two callers one across the table and the Indonesian guy in the BB. A flop of 2h-4s-7x fell. Indonesian guy bet 30....I raised to 60...he went into the tank. He tried to get info. out of me and was talking to me...I knew he was going to fold at this point. I'm guessing he was betting his draw. Although I may have gotten him to fold Q's. I'm not sure but he muttered "Nice bet" and folded after thinking about it for a long time. My small raise looked real Strong to him and that was my intention. He also said..."if you shoved there I would have snap-called". After he said that I knew I made him fold Q's or even K's.
I had another interesting hand against the drunk kid in the baseball hat. I raised to 12 again in early position with pocket black 9's. This time everybody folded except drunk kid. He held out his hand above the table with a call and said..."I'm calling...I could have anything". At this point that was very true...he shoved his stack with an open-ended straight earlier. The flop 2s-3c-9s...bingo. He bets 15...I called. 5c on the turn. I checked and he bet I think 30. I shoved at this point and he went on a drunken whine-fest. He was quite unlucky but he liked to steal pots and I knew this was another one. He eventually folded and left after some drunken banter. "FML" he said a few hand later holding Pocket K's out in front of him. That made me laugh because he raised and got two callers and then an ace flopped. That was it for him and he said "I'm going to take the rest of this to the craps tables...I can't believe this." I think there were 7 of us left at this point. There were more hands played and the table turned out to be one of the more entertaining I've ever sat at in Foxwoods. Of course winning some cash makes one a little more jovial. The last two times I've played cash a Foxwoods I've come out of it with a lot more than I went with. I wonder if the Mohegan Sun is sucking up a lot of the regulars. I come to Foxwoods about 2 times a year on average and I swear I play against the same people every time. I know that I've sat and played against quirky Internet kid and Red Sox hat #2 guy before. So the last hand that I played of the night was against Celtics hat dude #1. Everybody folded to me on the button and I looked down at two red Kings. I raised to 12 thinking that the blinds would think that I was stealing with anything. They told me I was tight so they probably thought I was trying to exploit my image. Both blinds called though! I raggy flop fell and the BB bet 30....I looked over at his stack and he had about 60 more. I raised his bet to 90 putting him all in. The quirky Internet kid folded in the SB. The BB called and my K's dominated his J's. The table broke up after that. It was 2:00 AM and I needed sleep. I just got through two weeks of kids being sick and me being sick so. Instead of playing all night and losing back half my stack I called it a night. I think I left with 450.00 altogether after buying in with 180.00. Fun Times at Foxwoods. It has been a long time......

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